Australians fume at UK bike secrecy

Date: December 22 2012

Samantha Lane

IN A pointed post-Olympics backhander, Australia's high-performance boss has accused Britain's mighty cycling team of breaking rules by hiding its cutting-edge equipment from rivals in a bid to gain an advantage in competition.

Cycling Australia's high-performance director Kevin Tabotta told Fairfax Media that the Australian camp had gone as far as trying to purchase one of the bikes Team GB used for the Olympics, only to find that the website advertising the equipment did not work. This, in Tabotta's view, was not an electronic glitch but a deliberate set-up to keep the technology used by the British team a secret.

Commercialisation rules set by cycling's world governing body, the UCI, state that all equipment must be available for the general public to purchase for a certain amount of time before major competition. But Great Britain, Tabotta said, had exploited the ''grey area'' in the regulations while Australia had played by the rules.

There was some angst in the French track team at the London Olympics this year - although it was not expressed formally - about the equipment the British team used.

''It would be difficult for anyone to assess whether our equipment is better or worse than another nation's because we can't get our hands on the UK bikes. Nobody can.

''They can buy ours, we can't buy theirs. That's a fact. Even though they're advertised on their website.''

Australian riders are acutely aware of how seriously Tabotta takes the UCI equipment regulations. Olympic sprint champion Anna Meares told Fairfax Media that Tabotta had made it clear it was not worth trying to gain an advantage by hiding something cutting-edge until race day if it potentially meant a key item like a helmet could be confiscated.

''There is some grey area around commercialisation of equipment, which we don't believe is necessarily applied fairly, or monitored correctly, by the UCI,'' Tabotta said.

''It's a difficult area we understand but still there needs to be a much stronger control about what the rules are from the UCI on equipment, and scrutinising of those rules.''

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